Lupica: Kelly shows class in the face of mud-slinging foes

Ray Kelly has been getting banged around from the mayoral campaign all the way to a demonstration by precious Ivy Leaguers the other day. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)

Ray Kelly, who has been a hero of his city by keeping it as safe as he has in a dangerous world, has been repaid over this political season this way: By getting banged around from the mayoral campaign all the way to a demonstration by precious Ivy Leaguers the other day.

At a time when the homicide rate in his city is ridiculously low, when the numbers say that over his last 12 years on the job 9,000 fewer people have been murdered in New York than in the previous 12 years, his critics have made him out to be some sort of racist tyrant.

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Kelly was asked Friday if he takes any of it personally.

He said: "Never. I've always been able to separate my job and my private life. And never lost sight of the fact that the job is supposed to be saving lives, even though others seem to lose sight of that fact occasionally."

This was the day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit took Judge Shira Scheindlin's decision on stop-and-frisk, the changes she wanted to make in the way Kelly and the NYPD do business, and folded that decision into a party hat.

Not only did the court put a stop to the changes that one judge, with a clear agenda against stop-and-frisk before the case even got to her, wanted to make in police work in New York, it harshly criticized her conduct in the case. Right before telling her to get lost.

"They never wanted a jury trial, where New Yorkers could have decided the merits of this case," Kelly said. "They wanted a one-judge jury, and that's exactly what they got."

Now de Blasio will get a chance to pick his own police commissioner. Maybe it turns out to be Bill Bratton, who has campaigned tirelessly for the job; who continues to tell us he practically invented police work in his 26 months on the job compared to the 156 months in total that Kelly has served. (James Keivom/New York Daily News)

Unless there is the kind of upset we got in the Olympics one time when the U.S. beat the Russians in hockey, Bill de Blasio will be elected mayor Tuesday. Of course de Blasio is one who has led the charge against Ray Kelly, even though de Blasio, as well-intentioned as he clearly is, seems to have gotten most of his knowledge about law enforcement from watching cop shows. Same as Shira Scheindlin.

Now de Blasio will get a chance to pick his own police commissioner. Maybe it turns out to be Bill Bratton, who has campaigned tirelessly for the job; who continues to tell us he practically invented police work in his 26 months on the job compared to the 156 months in total that Kelly has served. Then we will see if Mayor de Blasio and Kelly's successor can keep the city as safe as Bloomberg and Kelly have.

The next mayor and the next police commissioner absolutely get the same chance to fight guns the way Bloomberg and Kelly have, take as many of them off the streets, scare as many off the street because of policies that de Blasio continues to call "unconstitutional" even as Scheindlin has been knocked out of the box.

"The one-judge jury," Kelly said again.

From the appeals court: Scheindlin compromised "the appearance of impartiality surrounding this litigation." It is why she goes now.

So will Kelly, and soon, and the city will be poorer for that. He never talks about leaving, has said nothing about what he heard about stop-and-frisk over the past several months. He does not dignify the charges of racism that have essentially been leveled against him, talking instead about an approval rating from blacks of 63% earlier this year.

He talks about the number of homicides in the city so far this year - 273 through Sunday - when the number at the end of a year used to be 10 times that. Talks about how many of those still dying are dying in the same communities that Kelly's critics say he divides.

"We'll see what happens in Brownsville and Bed-Stuy and in East New York," Kelly said, "if somebody decides to take the foot off the pedal."

For months New Yorkers have been told — not just by Shira Scheindlin but by her cheerleaders — that somehow Bloomberg and Kelly are the bad guys we should be worrying about, as if somehow they are the real threats to everything good and decent.

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"I've always assumed that the majority of people know I'm not the ogre they've been told I am," Kelly said.

Smart people do know better. Stop-and-frisk will grind through the system now, the case will still be grinding its way through the system when somebody else tries to do Ray Kelly's job as well as he has.

You ask him to assess the job on Friday and this is what he says, in a much shorter decision than we got from the appeals court.